


The Date

by evieeden



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Captain America: The First Avenger, Dancing, F/M, POV Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers Feels, Stork Club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 14:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5629762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evieeden/pseuds/evieeden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy knows that if she just waits at the Stork Club, her date will arrive. Post-CA:TFA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Date

**Author's Note:**

> Just watched Captain America: The First Avenger again and cried so bad - like, when Bucky died and when Steve went in the ice and when Peggy saw his pre-serum picture in the file.... Seriously, there was so much crying and so many feels. So I wrote this. I hope you all like it and thanks for reading.

She sat there for as long as she could.

It was long past closing, she knew that, but there was a small part of her brain that told her that as long as she didn’t leave, he would show up. He wouldn’t be late.

Not this time.

Eventually Phillips arrived. She had seen the bartender looking her way nervously before making a phone call. She had thought the police was show up though, not her immediate superior.

He sighed heavily and then sat down at the table opposite her.

“What time did you tell him?” he asked gently. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him speak so softly in all their time working together.

“Eight sharp.” Her voice wobbled.

A splash landed against her arm, then another.

Her make-up was going to run. She had taken such care with it too. She had managed to scrounge up a stick of kohl from somewhere and some lipstick. She had even carefully selected her dress – the red number he had seen her in before, but not been able to take his eyes off of.

Phillips’ warm hand covered her own.

“Agent Carter… Peg… I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

A strangled cry left her lips and she clamped a hand over her mouth even though it was too late to hold it in.

Howard was searching. God, he was looking everywhere!

But this was it. This was important!

And if he…Steve…wasn’t here now then she knew, deep in her bones, that he never would be.

He was never coming back.

Phillips gathered her up against him as she collapsed, like all of her strings had been cut.

She cried and cried for what felt like hours. Phillips, for all his gruffness and disapproval, held her together through it all.

Darkness overtook her and when she opened her eyes again, she wasn’t in the Stork Club anymore. Instead, the familiar grey surroundings of her quarters in New York met her eyes.

Someone, probably Phillips, had left her a glass of water and a note stating that she wasn’t expected back in office until the next day.

Scrubbing her face viciously with cold water, she removed any hint of the make up she had been wearing and then lit a fire in the room, uncaring that it was the middle of the day. Stripping off her clothes, she burned them all – her dress, her stockings, even the purse she had been carrying were tossed into the flames.

Then when she felt composed enough – when she felt numb enough – she dressed in her uniform and pinned her hair back.

No-one met her eyes when she got to base and she marched, unchallenged, into the records room. She pulled out the folder that she had filed only the other day.

The folder of Steve before the serum altered him was still there.

She took it without any guilt.

He was never the army’s, not really.

Steve didn’t belong to America. He belonged to the people that loved him.

He belonged to Barnes. And he belonged to her.

She would keep him safe.


End file.
